- Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said a proposed Box Elder data center will be limited to 1.5 Gigawatts and 2,000 acres.
- The governor defended AI data centers as part of America's national security in competition with China.
- Cox spoke with Atlantic writer McKay Coppins at a panel co-hosted by the Deseret News on Monday.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox warned on Monday that Americans have not yet woken up to the high-stakes era of global technological competition that artificial intelligence has unleashed upon the world.
If the United States does not prioritize American AI dominance by building infrastructure as rapidly as the country used to, then it will have much bigger problems to worry about than data centers, Cox said.
“I don’t know that we have our eyes as open as we should on this,” Cox said during a panel discussion with Deseret Voices host McKay Coppins for the Atlantic Across America tour hosted in partnership with the Deseret News.
President Donald Trump has taken aggressive executive action to accelerate data center development, including by asking top military officials to encourage states to support the administration in an international AI arms race.
On Monday, Cox described what he saw as the existential risk presented by America’s Cold War-esque contest with China over AI models like Claude Mythos, which can autonomously identify and abuse cybersecurity weaknesses.
“If China had gotten that piece of technology first — that could exploit the vulnerabilities of almost every major company, and government entity in our country — it’s over, we’re done folks," Cox told the live audience.
This is the perspective missing from some national discussions around the investment needed to come out on top of what has been called the fourth industrial revolution, according to Utah’s Republican governor.
Cox balanced his urgent wake-up call with an evenhanded criticism of the whirlwind sequence of events that has made Utah a national flashpoint for Americans’ anxiety about the impending AI overhaul of the electrical grid.
The pushback of locals, and national groups, this month led to a reassessment of a massive data center project in rural Utah, with Cox assuring Utahns the state can enter the AI age without compromising environmental priorities.
How big is the Box Elder data center?
On April 24, Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority endorsed what celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank” fame said would be the largest data center in the world located in a barren part of Box Elder County.
There are roughly 700 hyperscale data centers across the U.S. Utah already has 48 data centers, drawing 920 megawatts of power, with 2,600 megawatts under construction, a Gardner Policy Institute analysis found.
But O’Leary’s proposed data center would be in a category of its own. At full buildout, it would cover 40,000 acres and consume between 7.5-9 gigawatts — or twice the amount of energy used by the entire state of Utah.
While Cox has devoted much of the past year to launching a national campaign to super-charge U.S. energy output ahead of the AI surge, he said he recognized the concerns about how Utah’s latest data center was approved.
“There’s been a tremendous amount of pushback. And people are right to push back,” Cox said on Monday. “The process wasn’t great.”
After it was fast-tracked through the state’s military economic development pipeline in April, the project received very visible backlash from a vocal group of Utahns who believe it will harm the Great Salt Lake.
Currently, a 100-megawatt data center requires approximately 2 million liters of water each day, which is about the daily use of about 6,500 households, as the Deseret News previously reported.
These evaporative cooling systems once commonly used to keep a data center’s massive banks of computer processors cooled down are being replaced by closed-loop systems, which are 70-75% more efficient, and air-cooled systems.
Proponents of the project have said the project will use a closed-loop system drawing from a portion of the 13,000 acre-feet (4 billion gallons) of water rights that come with the property, which is too dry for agricultural use.
The nonprofit Utah Clean Energy estimated that the 9 gigawatt data center could increase the state’s CO2 emissions by 50-75%, if it relies entirely on natural gas combustion to generate its power.
Utah State University physicist Robert Davies calculated a data center this big, with a dry air cooling system, would produce another 7-8 gigawatts of “waste heat,” potentially warming Box Elder’s Hansel Valley by several degrees.
Cox scales back the hyper scale project
Cox has said that one of the draws of Box Elder County — in addition to Utah’s expedited permitting process —is the convenience of a natural gas pipeline passing through the area which will make on-site power production easier.
A 2025 law, SB132, which was passed unanimously by the Utah Legislature, requires data centers to produce their own power so Utahns do not have to pay higher energy rates because of the huge demand created by AI.
On May 4 — after they were forced to move to a private room because protesters repeatedly interrupted them — Box Elder County commissioners permitted the data center, promising to provide careful oversight of the project.
The commissioners said they had reviewed thousands of public comments, mostly from non-Box Elder County residents, and had done research before making their decision, for which they have since received death threats.
Despite his early, and continued, support for the project, Cox acknowledged on Monday that the messaging around the data center had gotten away from state officials. He outlined some changes to reclaim public confidence.
That’s why Cox said his administration decided to issue a statement on Friday, “taking a step back” from some aspects of the project, “really just rightsizing this for this time because of the feedback that we got.”
The statement said the project developer has agreed to focus all approval requests only to phase I, limited to a 1.5 gigawatt facility, on less than 2,000 acres, and with no reduction to water going to the Great Salt Lake.
“Let’s make sure we are building these data centers in the right places, and in the right way so that we can do all the good things that can come from this,” Cox said.
An incremental approach is different from the “people against virtually everything” mentality that has paralyzed America’s ability to move forward with upgrades to energy infrastructure with endless lawsuits, Cox said last month.
Data centers are coming whether communities like them or not, Cox reiterated on Monday. What gives Cox hope is how Utah has demonstrated with its model approach to AI regulation that it can balance quality of life with innovation.
When asked whether he understood Americans who feel AI is being “shoved down their throats,” Cox said he shared the sentiment. But that doesn’t remove the responsibility to take a proactive stance on this issue, according to Cox.
“If China beats us to that, they lock us down, and I don’t know where we go from there,” Cox said. “So there is a real national security piece of this that I think we have to understand and that we have to be a part of, and Utah is going to be a part of those conversations.”